NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Vanderbilt Health patients can once again log into the patient portal after an hours-long outage on Monday disrupted access to medical records, doctor messaging, and appointment scheduling.
The disruption prompted questions about whether private medical data had been compromised, concerns that an expert said appear to be unfounded.
Technical issues noted on a banner on the My Health site went beyond the portal, apparently affecting patient exam rooms and phone lines, according to sources. The widespread impact also forced Vanderbilt Health to temporarily divert ambulances from its main campus to other hospitals.
Ken Mayer, a professor at the School of Computing at Lipscomb University and a Vanderbilt patient, said he does not believe the outage was the result of a cyberattack.
"I truthfully just think it was a data center. Electricity or Internet that went down," Mayer said.
Mayer said electronic medical records are difficult to breach, protected by national security standards that include encryption and secure facilities. He also pointed to how quickly the system was restored as evidence against a malicious cause.
"The system would not have come back up, and if it did, hackers are leaving notes on people's screens, more than likely not if it's healthcare, it usually leads to ransomware where they get access to all the data and only the hackers can see the data," Mayer said.
Beyond security, Mayer noted the broader importance of electronic medical record systems to patient care.
"We can catch something like COVID quicker if we have everybody communicating. The CDC can see something if they’re having an Ebola outbreak. Also, we can share data on people who might be suffering from all different kinds of ailments and put some things together. But if we were doing pen and paper, it would literally be me and you meeting at a doctor’s conference, talking about our research. If we didn’t meet there, we would never be able to share data,” Mayer said.
Vanderbilt University Hospital issued the following statement once service was back up.
Patient safety remains our top priority. Due to an issue earlier this morning with our electronic health record system, Vanderbilt University Hospital (VUH) was placed on temporary diversion status. However, the issue is now resolved and VUH has resumed normal operations. Other hospitals in the Vanderbilt Health system are operating normally.
The health system said it will reschedule all canceled telehealth visits.
